Research
A selection of essays, think pieces, interviews and reviews spanning theatre, music, film, contemporary art, design and culture.
A Different Light on Design
As part of the The Start - Design Bridge’s junior programme, I visited a multi-sensory exhibition designed to foster a greater understanding of disability. Inspired by our experience, strategist Gayatri Rana and I were eager to discover the latest design innovations that provide for the needs of people with disabilities.
Colour Outside the Lines - Review
What do you find beautiful or ugly about King’s Cross? What makes you feel authentic? These were among the questions BA Culture, Criticism and Curation students asked audiences at Colour Outside the Lines - a Central Saint Martins degree show.
Music re-makes what Parkinson’s breaks
In anticipation of my dad’s second album launch, I consider how artists use their creative practice to think through their experience of disability and illness.
Activating Audiences: Steven Berkoff’s Strategies for Engaging and Enhancing the Imagination in Theatre - Extract
If what defines theatre is the engagement of the imagination of the audience, then how can theatre practitioners activate and enhance that engagement so that audiences move from passive spectators to active participants in the making of theatre?
Disability, the curated drama?
How can curators challenge systems of domination to enable a more democratic and or equitable approach to curating?
Almost Tangible - immersive audio company brings the Scottish Play to our ears
An immersive 3D audio company has brought the Scottish Play to our ears and the result makes listening to William Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy feel almost tangible.
The Hiss - Review
What happens to the stories that stray from the traditional narrative arc? That defy explanation, but nonetheless are arresting to the extent they deserve to be shared?
Not All Disabilities are Visible
Who is speaking and to whom?
Witness
André Singer’s lucid Holocaust documentary ‘Night Will Fall’ demonstrates the power of cinema and its role in urging awareness in the present day. But why was Sidney Bernstein’s footage of the Nazi Concentration Camps suppressed until today?
There are two types of sound: music and noise - Cage on Composition
John Cage would say that any sound and every sound can be music - if we want it to be.
Jenny Holzer at the Tate Modern - Review
Jenny Holzer is best known for bringing art to the streets, but in a retrospective of her work at the Tate Modern, the street is reimagined inside the museum.
Why Artworks?
On the one hand, for as long as there is no consensus over whether art should be political, we are in danger of detracting from revolutionary art. On the other, perhaps it is this claim for autonomy which offers the Revolutionary protection.
Reflecting on Hito Steyerl’s ‘In Defence of the Poor Image’
The poor image starts life being a copy on the move, so increasingly deteriorated and mangled by the multitude of digital analogue hybrid processes that we doubt it ever existed as a clear focussed entity.
Lucia Cuba - Review
Peruvian artist Lucia Cuba operates at the intersection between fashion design and social research; creating garments and other wearable items which function as performative and political devices.
Drawing with Bodies
1962 Manhatten, New York City. A group of visual artists, dancers, choreographers, musicians and writers assemble at the Judson Memorial Hall to collaborate and produce work that will transform the trajectory of performance art.
Tania Bruguera's 10,148,451 is a case for mass empathy - Review
For the 2018 Hyundai Commission at the Tate's Turbine Hall, Tania Bruguera is challenging an absence of feeling through what she calls “political-timing specific art”.
Roma - Review
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma reveals to us the multilayering form of cinematic storytelling and all it can offer.
Cathy is Still Left Out in the Cold
If most of us agree that a roof over our head is a human right, why do we tolerate such an unscrupulous housing system?
Shame, Unearthed
The harrowing truth about Ireland’s mother and baby homes reveals shame as an intensely feared, physically felt and performed emotion that can be ‘caught’ through contact.
Text distilled down to only that which needs to be said, seen and felt - A Girl on Stage
How did the stage adaptation of Eimear McBride’s stream of consciousness novel A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing capture the hearts and minds of its audience? I review the play on stage at The Traverse theatre as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with the original novel and adapted script in hand.